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Higher Standard of Leadership: Lessons from the Life of Gandhi

A Higher Standard of Leadership:
Lessons from the Life of Gandhi


A Higher Standard of Leadership

Mahatma Gandhi is a name, spoken out with adoration and respect from the first day the world heard it till today. Gandhi was a living legend at his time, he was an unprecedented case of "proper" leadership, which gave results and was no harm to the people. Actually, Gandhi had his own conception of leadership, thought over carefully. The main idea of this conception was to open the leader's eyes and show him the difference between absolute and "pseudo-absolute" values (Nair, pg.23, 1996). He supposed that it is always possible to achieve the goal if you have strong desire and determination; the only obstacle is the right choice of the goal, which is crucial. It is natural for people to make mistakes - in their daily lives they are often confused with what to do next, which decision will be most optimal and correct. The appearance of this confusion is often caused by the choice of a pseudo-goal, which is followed by pseudo-problems on the way to its realization and pseudo-decisions to overcome them. Gandhi specified three main pseudo-absolute values:


Using leadership as a way to acquire power and prestige

We should remember that the power of a leader was lent to him by those whose trustee his is. In Mahatma Gandhi's opinion, leadership is a service as well as any other work performed by people. Even more, every person in the world takes part in it somehow: "Everyone in the organization, irrespective of position, can commit to one personal act of service every day"- by choosing the leader or leading.


Profits and interest guide the leader's decisions

Areally good leader should by all means be guided by moral principles as far as any leader is first of all a human being and he is to count on the natural rights of other people. Leadership as a service should strive for the profit and interest of the society he is serving.

Leadership should never serve for satisfying one's personal needs - its main aim is to meet and satisfy the needs of the society as a whole.

Leaders should separate their private life from the public one

In reality, Gandhi believed that leaders are to use similar ways of conduct in both of their lives. It is common knowledge that tolerance and patience are the basis of a happy family life, conducting which is not a bad of flowers - people do not always enjoy a cloudless lifetime, sometimes they have to overcome or endure difficulties to achieve their goal. Mahatma Gandhi said: "Your life is your message. Leadership by example is not only the most pervasive but also the most enduring form of leadership."

Having taken into account these three principles, we can say that Gandhi's life position correlated with the adage "?the ends justify the means", but only as long as the means don't cross the borders of the three statements mentioned above. To illustrate this statement we can use one of the most widespread services - healthcare. People, who come to hospital, assume that they are ill; after checking, the doctor diagnoses the patient and prescribes a way of treatment. Now it is necessary to notice that the treatment is not always a pleasant pastime, more often even a painful process. However, the results are positive - the patient is cured and is able to think about serious problems instead of enduring terrible body aches. So, we can vividly see that the ends here justify the means, but we should once more stress the fact that we can apply this statement only if it doesn't correlate with the pseudo-absolute goals.

Speaking about leadership, we should once more mention the fact that using leadership as a way to achieve fame, popularity, power and prestige is erroneous. Leadership is only a way to help people solve their problems, but not to realize one's power. Generally, power abuses the authority of a leader (Nair, pg.24, 1996): there is only one way for a good leader - to have authority, to be respected, otherwise his leadership will be authoritarian (if he imposes his position upon people). The word "power' by itself is associated with force, violence and imposing, which are in conflict with Gandhi's vision of a real leader. Conclusively, by saying "a leader" we mean a "spiritual leader", that is a person, whose spirit unites with the spirit of his people in harmony.

There is one more thing, mentioned by Keshvan Nair in his book, which is an attribute of power, but not leadership - "the code of silence (Nair, pg.35, 1996). It means that all the decisions in the country are made behind a locked double-door and no one knows what is going on in the room. This is a very destructive factor for the authority of a leader and for the stability in the country he is ruling - when people are unaware of what is going on, they start to panic, as far as their leader decides their destinies and they are not supposed to just stand aside. Therefore, minimizing secrecy in organizations is the best way out - introducing crystal-clear, transparent government will be a positive decision for both - the leader and the nation. To become a successful leader one should be honest with himself and with his nation - it is the best way for mutual understanding.

As it has already been mentioned, ideal leadership has to be a desire to help, but not a desire to self affirm. The latter can be described by the phenomenon Viktor Frankl called "existential vacuum" (Frankl, pg.93, 2000). This is a state when a person is not able to find the meaning of his or her life or he or she finally considers that their life is senseless. Frankl considers that it is "one of the major diseases of the twentieth century" (Frankl, 93, 2000). There are two obvious for an ill person ways out from the existential vacuum - suicide and quest for sense, which more often than not ends with the quest for power and control (Frankl, pg.119, 2000). In this case power is an escape from a person's inner problems, but not a way to help the nation or the people to solve their problems - there is the contradiction with Mahatma Gandhi's vision of leadership and power - he believed it must come form the bottom of one's heart, not from one's pragmatic desires. That is why Gandhi started speaking about the morality of leaders, which has to coincide with the moral values of the entire society. Even more, according to Viktor Frankl, to cure the hopelessness and existential vacuum, the doctor is to explain the meaning of responsibility to the patient. There are various kinds of responsibility a patient might feel - for himself, parents, society, etc (Frankl, pg.134, 2000). However, we can clearly see that there is a correlation with Gandhi's pseudo-absolute values. Irresponsible people, those who live in existential vacuum, can use leadership as a way to find sense for their own lives without taking into account the lives of people whose trustees they are. It is a vivid example of a pseudo-absolute value- incorrect usage of leadership.

The idea of correct leadership was later expressed and supported by Rushworth Kidder, who introduced "moral rectitude" (Kidder, pg.42, 2003), violation of which he considers inhumane, rude or evil (not suitable for a leader). Speaking about this idea, Kidder mentions such human traits as: love, truth, fairness, freedom, unity, tolerance, responsibility, and respect for life (Kidder, pg.43,63, 2003). Let's try to find correlation between these traits and Mahatma Gandhi's vision of a good leader. First of all, let's see if the listed traits suit a good leader.

Love: if a person loves him/herself, he/she is able to love others - it is the basis of harmony with ones environment, essential for a leader, especially for a spiritual one.

Truth and fairness: it is important for a leader to be trusted by his nation; otherwise he is a fake-leader. To gain people's confidence, the leader is to be fair - his deeds are to be common knowledge and he is to have nothing to hide. It's like friendship between two (or more) people - they share secrets, therefore, they absolutely trust each other and rely on each other. A good leader is to make friends with his people.

Freedom: real friends never impose their opinions and thoughts on each other. A good leader should give recommendations but not commands - he should always leave space for personal consideration, just like in the case with friendship - friends give advice, but don't force each other to do something. Freedom is an essential thing in leader-people communication as well as in any other - people are used to it and being deprived of it they feel mistreated and abused - this does not suit a good leader.

Tolerance: a good friend, as well as a good leader, is able to wait, to endure his partner's splash of emotions, settle down the conflict and continue doing what he was doing. It is important for a leader not to panic or make feverish decisions - this shows his weakness and immatureness for the position he is holding.

Responsibility: is a must for a leader. From the very first moment he was called a leader, he took the burden of responsibility for his nation and is not allowed to drop or even think about dropping it till the end of his leadership, when he will pass the burden to the next leader. It is important for a leader to understand that he is responsible for the lives and destinies of many people, who are waiting for a turn for the better.

Respect for life: this aspect is very closely connected with Mahatma Gandhi's vision of a good leader, as far he as no one else respected life, considering it a message each of us is trying to convey, a footprint, which will be the evidence of our presence. But this idea includes not only respect for one's personal life, but for the life of each and every person, who chose the leader -it is very important to keep them secure. So, all the components of Kidder's "moral rectitude" are the traits a good leader in Mahatma Gandhi's opinion should have.

All in all, we must confess, the there are very few people, who can fulfil all the demands for a good leader. Unfortunately, we live in a pragmatic and materialistic world, where people's main aim is money. However, we have no right to lose our get-up-and-go or come down a peg - we should still believe that ideal leader is not a history and we will have a pleasure to meet him some day, some time.





Reference List:

Frankl, V. (2000) Man's search for meaning. Perseus Publishing, New York.

Kidder, R. (2003). How good people make tough choices: resolving the dilemmas of ethical living. HaprerCollins Publishers, Inc., New York.

Nair, K. (1994, 1997). A higher standard of leadership: lessons from the life of Gandhi. Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco.
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Posted by: Jeffrey J. Thomson

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